Wanted:Feed Capacity

New Iowa Feed Mill Designed to Relieve Pressure From Increased Demand

Farmers Coop Society’s (FCS) old feed mill in Boyden, IA is rated at 600 tpd, but in recent years, it has been pushing 800 tpd. “We were running 24 hours a day, 5-1/2 days a week,” says Jared Terpstra, a 16-year veteran with the cooperative and feed division manager since June 2017. “We were in operation most Saturday mornings.”

The main factor driving that frantic, beyond-capacity pace was exploding demand in northwest Iowa, southwest Minnesota, and southeast South Dakota. In particular, a huge new Seaboard packing plant in Sioux City, IA has been driving increased livestock production, especially swine.

The pace is less frantic at the old mill since FCS began production in mid-June at a new all-steel 3,000-tpd mill, its second in Boyden. The new mill, devoted entirely to swine feed production, is adjacent to the cooperative’s 2.4-million-bushel Boyden elevator one block north of the U.S. Highway 18 blacktop. (The older mill remains in production focusing on specialty feeds.)

The opening follows 18 months of construction with B & E Construction Inc., Eagle Grove, IA (800-779-0001), serving as general contractor and millwright. “B & E has done multiple upgrades for us on other feed mills, and we were comfortable with them,” Terpstra comments. “We also liked the price on their bid.”

Mill Specifications
Currently, about two-thirds of the new Boyden mill’s output is in the form of bulk mash feeds, while the other third runs through the mill’s single pellet line. (Plans call for the addition of a second line, as needed.)

The new mill’s 120-x-60-foot footprint includes a single-story warehouse and a 163-foot-tall mill tower. The tower, in turn, includes 19 square ingredient bins holding about 2,000 tons of ingredients, two mash bins holding 150 tons each, and 20 loadout bins with a total of 1,500 tons.
All milling functions are under the control of a CPM/Beta Raven automation system.

This begins with grinding operations. Some corn is run through an RMS 12x62 crusher in advance of two Bliss hammermills, which reduce the corn to 300-micron particles at 120 tph. “The theory is that pre-crushed corn provides less pull on the actual hammermill, resulting in lower energy usage,” says Ron Witham, feed production manager, who came to FCS 1-1/2 years ago from Farmers Cooperative (now Landus).
The rest of the corn is reduced on one of three RMS 12x52 triple-stack roller mills at 135 tph.
Feed ingredients are combined in an eight-ton Scott double-ribbon mixer at an average mix time of three minutes per batch. Fats can be added at the mixer using a Liquid Systems valve and Micro Motion flowmeter. Microingredients are sent from a 34-bin Beta Raven micro system, 14 bins using a loss-in-weight system.

Pelleting is done on a Buhler T-12 pelleting line, featuring an 800-hp pellet mill fed by steam from a pair of Buhler steam conditioners, which is generated in a Cleaver-Brooks boiler.

The pellet line features a prototype counterflow cooler from Buhler, with a signature octagonal shape. The cooler features a cone-shaped stopper, which moves to release pellets when they reach a target temperature. Finally, the mill features an express multi-spout loadout system designed by B & E Construction. FCS operates a fleet of 38 feed trucks.